Tag Archives: BBC News

Millie Makes Me Proud To Be A Cat

Recent reports that a Cat called Millie who was allegedly ‘stuck’ in a tree, after being chased up it by another Cat, have come to this Cat’s attention and of course I would like to not only report Millie’s heroism but also confer her true story to the masses of readers who catch my blog now and again in the hope that the story of this brave and justifiable annoyed Cat will give an insight into the mind of a Cat.

An insight that appears to be sadly lacking in most humans this Cat has to say, especially to those in the rescue services and the ambulance chasing media who rush to this sort of ‘event’ and in doing so; firstly create the ‘event’ to fill their tawdry newspapers and tv bulletins and secondly cause considerable embarrassment to an innocent Cat who is carefully minding his or her own business from very high up.

I have to say that I have found a Cat after my own heart! In fact more than that I think I have found a Cat who has been reading my blog and of course my wonderful masterpiece of Feline literature “Getting Out Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary” available at all good bookshops and at a place called Amazon.com which, as I say a little too often, you may have heard of because Amazon.com are nearly as famous as yours very truly.

In my wonderful book and indeed on my award winning and peerless blog I explain the annoyance that a Cat suffers when humans think it is stuck up a tree when in fact it is perfectly happy to simply take in the view. Sorry I had to laugh then I used the words human and think in the same sentence – I knew I could do it one day if I tried really hard

Still enough of the blatant and hard nosed advertising and plugging of my wonderful book, although vast summer sales are very important if I am to stay on top of the bestseller lists for a long time (unsubtle hint hint).

I think that it is true to say that Millie the Cat is obviously an avid reader of fine literature – no Dan Brown books on her shelves I bet. Millie obviously had been reading my wonderful blog and book and thought that she would give tree climbing a bit of a go and gosh did Millie have a go! Not only managing, with a little help from a cast list of various and assorted humans who I will deal with as they appear but also by rewarding her eventual ‘rescuers’ with a lot of swear word evoking deep scratches.

I use the word ‘rescuers’ in inverted commas because as usual with any “Cat Stuck Up A Tree” story there is no hard evidence that the Cat in question who is up the aforementioned tree actually requires any ‘rescuing’ or indeed any form of outside ‘assistance,’ in any shape or form.

It seems as though Millie, a rather good looking Cat who looks a lot like me with Silver, Tabby and White fur and in her case the addition of some Tortoiseshell colouring on her back, was taking in the view of the neighbourhood from 40 feet, or 12 metres if you are of the metric persuasion, above ground in a conveniently tall tree and had been keeping this vigil for a few days, around five to be precise when her ‘owner,’ and of course I use that word loosely, decided that she was in fact stuck up the tree she was in.

Humans should stop for a moment before they start to panic and jump to conclusions such as “that Cat is stuck up the tree because she or he hasn’t been down it for five days!”

Why?

Well I would have thought ‘that’ was obvious derr! Millie like most Cats who climb trees to take in the view and to feel the branches making their whiskers twitch to say nothing of feeling the wind ruffle their fur, usually climb down for food and a comfort break or two at night when it is nice and quiet and the humans in the neighbourhood are mostly asleep or rather drunk and unsteadily wandering the streets too lost to notice or care about a Cat having a err, comfort break in the front garden.

I am pretty sure that Millie was doing exactly that on the day when her human decided to panic and set in motion a procession of calamitous errors of judgements, actions and more and why did he wait for five days? Why not two or three, or seven why five days, it is bizarre!

The first thing Millie’s human did was to disturb the Fire Brigade. Why do they do that humans? Firemen have probably the most important job in the world, they save people from very dangerous things like err fire and shouldn’t be called to retrieve a Cat from a tree, especially when a Cat doesn’t want to be retrieved in the first place.

In this case it would seem that the Fire Brigade were not too happy about the emergency call and worse still they were unable to put their ladders up against Millie’s wonderfully tall tree because the ground wasn’t safe, which just goes to show that Millie had chosen her tree very wisely for her period of private contemplation and obviously didn’t want to be disturbed.

The Firemen decided to try something ‘different’ and rather uncharacteristically for Firemen turned their hose on her apparently to ‘encourage’ her to come down from the tree and presumably to shut her panicking ‘owner’ up.

So a soggy Millie did what any sensible drenched Cat would do in the circumstances and climbed higher up the tree to get out of the range of the hose, clever Cat! I wonder how many humans would think of that one.

Unfortunately for the ‘rescuers’ (and by now several hundred by-standers, gwapers and of course a number of media representatives) the hose trick had not saved Millie, unfortunately for Millie, her ‘owner’ and advisers had several more hair-brained rescue schemes in reserve and through the day carried them out not even stopping for sandwiches at lunchtime.

Next on the scene for an interview, with the media and an in-depth face to face with the BBC News cameras and then a rescue attempt were the ‘RSPCA.’

RSPCA is short for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals, of course any organisation with the word ‘royal’ in the title is going to be a bit useless and although the RSPCA spokesperson gave a very good interview to camera they couldn’t really do much because the ground around the tree was flooded courtesy of a number of disgruntled Firemen and to most watching seemed to give in a little early.

Just as all hope of a ‘rescue’ picture exclusive was beginning to fade Millie’s owner and the assembled crowd of well wishers, idlers and hangers-on had yet another cracking idea. They would order up some scaffolding. Not presumably for a public execution because this was Barnsley in Yorkshire and not downtown Tehran and as a consequence of the geography thankfully public executions had been outlawed a long while ago.

The scaffold arrived on the back of a truck with two scaffolders, who after they had managed to clear a space in the enormous crowd, very quickly used all of the poles they had brought to surround the tree and Millie. Unfortunately the scaffolding wasn’t tall enough for the brave scaffolders to hear Millie spitting at then clearly when they were at the top, in short the scaffolding tower surrounding the tree was too short.

It was probably now as the crowd started to lose interest and shout things like “shake the tree!” “Throw your shoe at the Cat!” that the scaffolders decided to take matters and of course their lives into their own hands and instead of going back for more scaffolding they decided to climb the to the uppermost parts of the trees.

These parts of trees are also known as the flimsiest. They are in fact so insubstantial that if a tree was subject to the laws of the land related to say construction they would have to have a sign clearly displayed saying “These branches will not support the weight of a human not even a child.” Or something like that! But they didn’t and it is probably pointless to ask if the scaffolders would have heeded such a sign anyway, scaffolders being who they are!

It would seem that the tree climbing went rather well and slowly but surely the scaffolders managed to get onto the same level as their quarry although it is clear to see from the picture below that their ‘quarry’ was not exactly overjoyed to have the company of two burly scaffolders in her bit of the tree, and worse she had now started to run out of tree.

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To her credit Millie had managed to scratch and bite both scaffolders severely in no time at all, it has to be said here that the scaffolders really only had themselves to blame as they weren’t wearing any protective clothing.

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Millie bravely put up a considerable fight against very unequal odds all the way down the tree as she struggled to stay up it and the scaffolders struggled to bring her down it.

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By the time Millie was reunited with her human (in the blue shirt covered in err urine – well she was still scared in her defence) she had happily drawn a lot of blood and though boggled eyed from the struggle cooly ignored the cameras, interviewers and the crowds whoops of joy that she was back on terra firma.

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Of course this story is not new it is the age old story of a Cat stuck up a tree and as it is being eventually rescued it mauls the rescuers and if you humans don’t want to hear it repeated time and again you have to do something yourselves.

Next time you see a Cat minding its own business up a tree, no matter how high it happens to be up that tree, before you call out the Fire Brigade, the Army, the Police, Scaffolders, Helicopter Rescue and any other Fred, Ned or Ted please ask yourself this simple question first.

Does that Cat need rescuing or is it simply enjoying the view?

And then before you cause a media event involving the Fire Brigade and any number of other rescue services just ask yourself this simple question!

If Cats actually do get stuck up trees and can’t get down why is it that we don’t see a lot of Cats that suffered the ultimate price for their, as human’s would put it ‘stupidity?’

The answer is rather simple and one day I expect it to occur to a human – very few, if any, Cats get stuck in trees and if they do then they are only temporarily stuck!

Of course there is always ‘one’ in the crowd, there will always be the ‘odd’ Cat, and I would emphasise the word ‘odd’ here, who gets stuck in a tree and can’t get down but they are the exception to the rule and even they are not stuck as a rule if you see what I mean.

What humans should be on the look out for is Cats who get stuck in places that have doors, where some idiot human tidily closes the door after a curious Cat has slunk in to investigate a new and probably dark place.

I have to say here that some of my best friends, yes including the half brained Ginger have been stuck on occasions but they tend to be stuck between floors in blocks of flats or in Ginger’s case in the down section of a drainpipe, no I don’t know why the clown crawled into a drainpipe backwards either! Although he says it was so he would be the right way round and therefore able to peep out of the drainpipe, which you have to admit has a strange kind of logic doesn’t it?

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Cat Got Your Tongue?

“Has the Cat got your tongue?” Is like all of those humans expressions about Cats it casts Cats in the role of villain and quite frankly not at all nice.

Why is it that Cats have such a bad reputation when it comes to old sayings or expressions? It is something I have puzzled about when sitting very comfortably and warmly on various human laps and knees recently as apparently the flood water in Central Europe gets deeper and Poland, Hungary and the Czech republic start to drown, but back to that later.

Honestly I have no idea why Cats have such a bad reputation and would be interested to hear from any reader why they think it is the case! Apart, of course, from the reader who asked me why I hadn’t written a blog for a few days and they, in turn, hadn’t had anything funny to read.

Well I replied to them that they really ought to read my book of course book which anyone can easily get here at Amazon.com as if you all need reminding tee hee, and I also let them into a bit of a secret and that is that everyone will soon be able to read my wonderful book on a Sony eReader because those nice people at Sony and this wonderful Cat are going to start ‘bundling’ my amazing ebook with their cute eReader so that you can all buy them as a set if you see what I mean – do contact me for details.

Still the note from my fan did make me think about the phrase “Has the Cat got your tongue?” though, and I thought that I would share those thoughts with you below.

1. What would a Cat do with your tongue or indeed anyone else’s tongue – make a tongue necklace? I hardly
think so!
2. Where would we keep all of the tongues we collect? We don’t have pockets you know, or if we do I have never found mine!
3. Old sayings are as mental as the people who use them.
3. Couldn’t really think of a third point.
3. I think I am a little confused with the numbering system here and anyway I am getting bored with this
list.
4. Dropped off for a while until I was woken up by someone standing up and me falling on my feet (of course).
5. Why do humans stand up unexpectedly when a warm Cat is comfortably asleep on their lap?
6. I may have lost my train of thought and veered off the subject I was thinking about!
7. What was the subject?
8. What am I doing here.
9. Does existentialism have any relevance to the modern feline.
10 My head hurts!

It is so unlikely that a Cat and this cat in particular would want to steal a human tongue that I had to commission an artist to show a Cat stealing a tongue.

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Artist’s impression of Cat lulling human to sleep before stealing tongue.

One last thing before I go off to find a lap and have a well deserved sleep. The weather here has been pretty terrible recently ‘but’ and it is a very big but just as the idea that Cat’s collect tongues is a myth so is the ‘fact’ reported by the BBC News that the Czech republic, Poland and Hungary are flooded – they aren’t I promise you, so please stop if you were reaching for the inflatable life raft catalogue and wondering if they deliver to Prague. Prague and the surrounding countryside is as dry as a bone, or it was a couple of days ago when I flew over it on my way back from Moscow – the Russian bless them are buying my book now.

Not only that currently I am looking out over Prague from the largest film studios in Europe on a hill above Prague where I can see for miles or kilometres as they say here and I can’t see a drop of water that isn’t in the place it should be ie., the Vltava river which flows, usually in an orderly fashion, through Prague and then down to Slovakia where it is given a new name and eventually ends up in the sea somewhere.

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Artist’s impression of BBC news imaginary flood water.

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A No News Day

Quite often I find a subject for my blog in the news and when I say news I mean the lighter than air meringue stuff that they serve on ‘news’ websites where ‘news’ usually involves stories of several fat ladies and a Yorkshire Terrier doing something heroic, such as eating their weight in Mushroom Omelettes or something.

Then there is the stuff on sites that offer in the ‘broadcasters’ opinion earth shattering news, you know the sort of thing, the latest CNN travel bag has been launched and now comes with a ten year guarantee which offers you your money back if the travel bag gets damaged so long as you never use it on airlines, French HiSpeed trains and indeed anywhere where a baggage handler might get to ply his or in some very muscular cases ‘her’ trade.

Often the non-news, as I like to call it, extends to other topics such as the Queen of England having a new hair do or a sitting for yet another painting, they both seem to be about as regular as each other.

Then there are some news orgainsations that will go to any lengths to take old news dress it up and churn over it time and again, this is usually done with over paid and unqualified celebrity presenters I can think of one new Poodle on the block who fits the bill perfectly there can’t you?

‘But’ and it is, as I often say a big one (and so in this case I will say it again), ‘but’ today the non-news is monumental the BBC News website, home of adverts for many of their up coming new programmes and mini-series, leads with a story that is entitled “Obama in final health vote push.”

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Obviously the story’s subject is very, very important but today isn’t decision day in the Senate and so there is little or no news for the idle journalists to write who are constantly being asked to find new angles, threads and much more to justify their expensive existence and that means that any ‘news’ organisation covering the ‘story’ has little or nothing to say and so they produce this sort of nonsense.

To tell the truth (something that seems to be missing from news sites these days) I am surprised that the headline on the BBC site didn’t say “Obama reminds everyone to set their alarm clocks” so that they get to work on time and are able to vote.

Surely if there were less headline non-news stories the news media would have more room for other stories that somehow get sidelined and then the real ‘news’ when it breaks would be important and less of a ‘relief’ that the story has finally died. But then what do I know I am just a Cat after all.

I am sure that you dear readers have our very own pet non-news stories and I would love to hear them.

In the meantime this clever Cat is off to hear why Africa’s Elephants are keeping scientists guessing then I might do bit of crystal ball gazing and read New US-Russia nuclear deal ‘soon’ of course after all of that I am going to do the most constructive thing you can with the Sunday newspapers, light a fire!

Don’t forget that you can get a much more interesting read here www.thecatsdiary.com for free or you can part with a bit of cash for a great read here Amazon.com

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Can You Imagine?

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I heard today that there are several rivers in Europe that are frozen over because it is so cold, here if you are interested (in Prague where am currently) it is minus nine degrees C! Now I have no idea what that is in good old fashioned English degrees of cold, but I imagine that it could quite easily be described as “bloody cold” and very close to “Brass Monkeys” – ask me to explain the latter low temperature terminology at your peril har ha.

Anyway one could rightly describe Europe and, I believe, all sorts of other places where my wonderful book “Getting Out Excerpts From A Cat’s Diary” (still available at Amazon.com) is actually even more popular like the sublime US of A as icy.

So what is happening? Global Warming? Mmh me thinks not, correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t the title “Global Warming” tend to sort of suggest that we all should be clip clopping around in Hawaiian shirts, shorts and flip flops, well the humans anyway, flip flops just don’t suit me.

Oh I pray that the idiots like Bono and Al the Gore who have been going around getting fat telling us just how bad we are and how dreadful the planet is going to be because we didn’t clean the corners of our bedrooms properly, are wrong!

Sadly I don’t suppose they are and of course all the time they fly around the world telling us that we are all going to fry, they are proving themselves right, because they are adding to the pollution that they jabber on about so much. Its just that they are so… so… aren’t they, gosh even the Pope isn’t as holy as Bono is he?

Mmh now where is the point of this blog, what have I done with it, oh look there it is nice and safe.

So the frozen rivers huh? By the way -9C is around -16F or in other words very chilly and that is the beginning (again) of my point, it is cold, some say – well the BBC News and you believe what they say at your peril I know – the coldest winter on record and the records go back to around the 16th Century here in Pres Bush’s Old Europe.

If that is the case then just imagine this! The River Thames (in London for those who are geographically challenged) used to freeze over most years from the middle (sort of) of the 14th century until and get this, because it was news to me until I started to get interested in frost, (and don’t you say anything about having too much time on ones paws will you?) until the 19th Century and in fact that was the sort of ‘norm’ for most European cities.

Most European Cities had “Frost Fairs” well the ones with rivers of course had “Frost Fairs” and isn’t it nice to see that they liked a little bit of understatement – frost fairs I ask you!

Of course Bono and Al the Gore would be going around saying what we need is to to get all of the governments of the world together to spend vast fortunes inventing chemicals that would create a sort of umbrella to keep the heat in and they would probably come up with a great name for the effect of course and make a movie about it and ramble on about their ideas for a Greenhouse effect at every opportunity they could find.

Would you believe that in 1683 the ice on the River Thames was 11 inches or 28 cms thick in the middle of London and the North Sea froze for several miles out to sea unbelievably and the ‘great minds’ of the time happily kept their mouth’s shut.

And it was actually mild in London in 1683, in Frome in Somerset the ground was frozen to a depth of four feet and that says chilly more than anything you could think of doesn’t it?

So who thinks that we are in for what they called the “Little Ice Age” from the 14th century to the 19th century, well no one in their right mind of course and that is because the weather bless it is so unpredictable, can someone mention that to Bono and Al the Gore before they get us to worry ourselves to death.

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